Wednesday, March 23, 2011

1959: California here we come! Part 1

Auction, Auction - Catch some Good Buys and Lighten our Load!
We're moving to California!
Wills, Rivets and Mylotts heading out for a new life!
Out with the Old; In with the New!





1959: I was too young to really understand everything but I got the basic message: we selling out and moving to California- all of us - the Wills family of Wyantskill, the Mylott and Rivet family now of Green Island.  Our families all moved out of Cohoes after Wold War II and now, together, we were moving to the west coast to take advantage of the jobs, the sunshine, newer housing, and "fun in the sun".  Yes, everything would be better in LA because, well, isn't that close to Disneyland where your dreams come true?   So goodbye old man winter, no more shoveling that snow, no more Hudson Valley grey skies.  We were a few of many because at that time it seemed all Americans were moving west to California and we were not going to be left behind.

So we sent the men first in an exploratory mission and they drove off in a Buick? or was it a Pontiac? Then in April, the big auction in the backyard and everything we owned was taken away by neighbors who hung over the fences around our yard to bid on my uncle's bench saw, electrical supplies, carpentry tools, and a canvas tent I remember so well. Was it army surplus? left over from WW2?  Away went our living room furniture, my best girlfriend's mother bought our coffee table.  There wasn't much left but we wouldn't need much while the men drove west once again to find housing and jobs.  It would just be a matter of weeks or months. So we put the house on the market in Green Island. The Wills sold their house in Wyantskill. Mom and I moved in next door with Pipere Rivet in the little upstairs flat with an iron cast stove for cooking. Then we waited for news.....and waited to move....

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